"He stood between the living and the dead and the plague stopped." Numbers 16:48

Monthly Archives: April 2014

Being a nanny and an aunt means that I get to revisit things from my childhood often.

You’re watching the kid shows the children around you are watching and you start comparing the kids stuff of today with the kid stuff of your time. You wonder, “Would they like the original My Little Ponies?” You know, back before the Equestrian Girls (horse girl hybrids) showed up.

For Christian homes there were/are always alternatives to watching Disney, Nick Jr, or Sprout and let’s be real, sometimes they are completely made of CHEESE.

I was in youth group when Veggie Tales became a thing and we ATE. IT. UP. It was quite the departure from my generation’s Christian Barney equivalent, Psalty the Singing Song Book. We loved Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber, even though they were meant for kids a good bit younger than us. The bright and comical retelling of favorite bible stories (at least in the early days) was fun and engaging, and who didn’t love Silly Songs With Larry or Love Songs With Mr. Lunt? To this day I know all of the words to the cheeseburger song.

A day or so ago the woman I nanny for and I were talking about good ol’ Psalty and recalling when the churches we grew up in had done different Psalty plays (because oh yes, there were plays) and how ridiculous they had been, but how much we had enjoyed it all at the time anyway. In that conversation she mentioned that she had recently purchased Kids Praise 1 and 2 for her two year old because she thought he might like the songs. So yesterday we had some fussy time I was trying to defuse and usually a little music helps, so I put on the Kid’s Praise album and had a moment… The kids enjoyed it, but I cried. Psalty made me cry and here’s why:

First it was like stepping back in time, I hadn’t heard any of those songs in probably 20 years, but hearing them and seeing the album covered I was taken back to my parents living room where they played the record for my sister Kristin and I, I couldn’t have been more than four.

I knew ALL of the words to these songs after all that time of not hearing them AND what astonished me the most was realizing that Psalty the Singing Song Book is responsible for a number of scriptures I know by memory to this day.

The songs on that album are fun and engaging, but they aren’t about hairbrushes, water buffalo, or cheeseburgers.

The words I remember from Psalty’s songs are things like,

“Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us… that we should be called the sons of God”

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you, hallelujah.”

“Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another! 1 John 4: 7& 8”

“Father I adore you, lay my life before you, how I love you!”

“Because you gave me a heart and you gave me a smile, you gave me Jesus and you made me your child, and I just thank you Father for making me me.”

Psalty may have been cheesy, and sure, he was probably the only book every known to have a blue afro, but it’s precious to me today to know that when I was four and five the words in my heart and in my mind were from God’s word and that they have stayed with me all of this time.